I. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to the field of data processing. More particularly, the invention relates to computerized systems and methods for generating an accounting document.
II. Background Information
Business object technology and business object programming are based on the concept of business objects. Real world objects, such as an employee or a sales order, are modeled as business objects in business application systems, such as the SAP R/3 system. Business objects encapsulate data and business processes, thus hiding the details of the structure and implementation of the underlying data.
To achieve this encapsulation, the business objects are constructed as entities with multiple layers. At the core of a business object is a kernel, which may represent the object's inherent data. A second layer, called an integrity layer, may represent the business logic of the object. The integrity layer may include business rules and constraints that apply to the business object. A third layer, called an interface layer, may describe the implementation and structure of the business object, and defines the object's interface to the outside world. A fourth and outermost layer of a business object is called an access layer, which may define the technologies that can be used to obtain external access to the object's data, such as COM/DCOM (Component Object Model/Distributed Component Object Model).
The interface layer may separate a business object's data and the applications and technologies that can be used to access it. To the outside, business objects may reveal only their interface, which may include a set of clearly defined methods. Applications may only access the business object data by the object's methods. Further, an application program that accesses a business object and its data only needs the information required to execute the methods. Therefore, an application programmer can work with a business object and invoke its methods without having to know or consider the object's underlying implementation details.
A set of methods that is associated with a business object may represent the object's behavior. When a method is executed on a business object, the method may change the object's internal state (e.g., the object's data). Business object types and methods are typically identified and described in a repository, such as a SAP Business Object Repository (BOR) or an Enterprise Service Repository (ESR).
Business objects are also used in accounting systems. In particular, an important task of accounting is recording information. Accounting procedures value business transactions on a monetary basis and update them, providing the information for audit purposes, for example. Since different kinds of information are recorded for different business transactions, accounting documents include different accounting document items and have varied structures. Collections of accounting document items having the same structure are called ledgers.
A ledger can have an additional structure that enables a differentiation between a general ledger and different sub-ledgers. The general ledger contains all information that is the same for all business transactions. The sub-ledgers supplement the general ledger in accordance with different kinds of business transactions and information.
Using general ledgers and sub-ledgers requires consistency between the information across the general ledgers and sub-ledgers. Data consistency can be provided by avoiding data redundancies and can be accomplished by distributing the accounting document items over general ledgers and sub-ledgers. Thus, several ledgers have to be read in order to completely reconstruct a business transaction in accounting.
Due to internationalization, many companies have to prepare and log the same business transaction in accordance with different accounting principles in order to meet the legal reporting requirements governed by various jurisdictions. Accordingly, there is a need for automatic and consistent creation of accounting documents in accordance with different accounting principles.